Frugal Living and Early Retirement

September 2015 Update: News, Income, & Expenses

News

September was much less chaotic than August. After packing up for yet another move, we spent a week in Iowa with Kara’s Mom, and got to spend time with her Dad and Stepmom as well.

Next we boarded Chiqui with our Iowa vet, and headed to Toronto to spend three weeks with Stephen’s brother and his wife and kids, who are one and three. Stephen’s Dad also flew in from Seoul for a week. It’s fun to see Grandpa with the kids since he doesn’t get to see them very often.

The exciting news at the end of September was that our niece, Katelynn, got engaged to her boyfriend. Payton is great guy and we are so excited for them!

Income

We aren’t planning on too many months to look like this September in terms of income. There was a small crisis in Kara’s department at Stanford and she ended up working a lot of hours at the end of August (for which she was paid in September), plus there was some retroactive pay because of a time card she forgot to submit earlier in August. Then Stephen got some money for his birthday (yes, our parents still like to give us money on our birthdays) and his Dad visited from Seoul and gave us some Canadian dollars as well as some U.S. dollars he wanted to get rid of since he never travels to the U.S. any more.

Expenses

Expenses were fairly light in September because we stayed with family the whole month and did not need to rent an apartment. Kara did splurge on a $200 tiny Samsung SSD hard drive to store movies on for when we are traveling (which is obviously a lot).

We also spent much more on food this month – $650 (compared with $300-$400 normally). Part of this is due to purchasing food & wine to bring as gifts and part is due to food being more expensive in Canada